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Col­or print­ing is now avail­able more than ever. In addi­tion to expen­sive print­ers for the office, there are many bud­get mod­els designed for small print vol­umes and then ide­al for the home. We fig­ure out which one is bet­ter to buy, how much a good print­er can cost — just below are our rec­om­men­da­tions for mod­els.

Choosing a printer: the main nuances

To under­stand how to choose a col­or print­er for home use, you need to deal with the main ques­tion: how do dif­fer­ent mod­els dif­fer. Today in the range you can find three types of print­ers.

Inkjet - print­ed on paper with tiny drops of black and col­or ink (from 3 to 6 col­ors) through a spe­cial matrix. They are inex­pen­sive, easy to main­tain, able to work with pho­to­graph­ic paper. Orig­i­nal car­tridges are not cheap, but for large print vol­umes, you can install con­tin­u­ous ink sup­ply sys­tems (CISS), this will great­ly reduce costs. But most like­ly, you will have to for­get about war­ran­ty ser­vice.

Laser — here the mag­ne­tized par­ti­cles of ton­er are trans­ferred to the pho­to­con­duc­tor, form­ing an image for paper on it. More suit­able for the office, because they do not know how to print on pho­to paper. But they work much faster than inkjet ones — they can “spit out” up to 25 pages per minute.

LED or LED print­ers — This is a par­al­lel branch of the devel­op­ment of laser print­ing tech­nolo­gies and works on a prin­ci­ple sim­i­lar to laser print­ing. There is no pho­to­drum in LED print­er car­tridges, which means you can not exper­i­ment with dubi­ous refills and pur­chase orig­i­nal ones inex­pen­sive­ly.

The advan­tages of LED mod­els are the same as those of laser ones, but they are more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, so they are bet­ter suit­ed for home use. True, these print­ers are more expen­sive.

Printer specifications: what to look for?

For­mat. It is unlike­ly that you will need a print­er designed for A0 — for domes­tic use, equip­ment with A4 (stan­dard sheet of paper) and A3 (twice as large as A4) is more suit­able.

Per­mis­sion. For print­ing doc­u­ments or pic­tures down­loaded from the Inter­net, it is unprin­ci­pled. If you want to print pho­tos, it is bet­ter to choose a mod­el with a res­o­lu­tion of at least 4800x1200 for col­or for­mat.

Print speed. Again, there is no point in dwelling on the “rate of fire” for the house. An inkjet print­er can spend about 40 sec­onds to print a 10 * 15 pho­to, an inex­pen­sive laser print­er pro­duces an aver­age of 4–5 pages per minute.

The pres­ence of a Wi-Fi mod­ule. A great fea­ture with which you can trans­fer files to print wire­less­ly. It is very con­ve­nient if you shoot on a smart­phone — you do not need to con­nect it to a com­put­er.

Total: a color printer for the home, which one to choose?

We have select­ed sev­er­al mod­els, inex­pen­sive and pop­u­lar.

Inkjet printers

Canon PIXMA TS304 — from 20$

• Small in size, it’s a con­ve­nient and reli­able option for low-vol­ume, high-qual­i­ty print­ing with­out being tied to a PC with a cord.
• Suit­able for reg­u­lar, 2–3 times a week print­ing in small vol­umes — to issue a post­card or a title page for a diplo­ma and an essay.

Advan­tages: low price, silent, high speed, wire­less inter­face.

Flaws: to work with mobile gad­gets over the air, you need sep­a­rate soft­ware, does not sup­port iOS.

A good option, does not take up much space, while it looks quite styl­ish. Res­o­lu­tion 4800×1200 dpi will be quite enough even for pho­to print­ing. Despite the low price, the device has good reviews.

Canon PIXMA iP7240 — from 42$.

• good speed — 10 ppm, col­or repro­duc­tion at the lev­el of pro­fes­sion­al devices and a res­o­lu­tion of whole dpi 9600x2400;
• the abil­i­ty to print on the sur­faces of CD / DVD discs, envelopes per­fect­ly com­ple­ments the func­tion­al­i­ty.

Advan­tages: afford­able price, duplex print­ing, max­i­mum res­o­lu­tion, work with mobile devices via WiFi;

Flaws: lack of CISS, you will have to spend mon­ey on con­sum­ables for large vol­umes of print­ing.

A good choice for those who want to show­case their cre­ativ­i­ty on glossy or mat­te paper in excel­lent qual­i­ty.

Canon PIXMA G1410 — from 90$.

• Equipped with CISS, this car­tridge­less print­er has saved the user the pain of choos­ing between econ­o­my and qual­i­ty;
• res­o­lu­tion of 4800x1200 dpi for bor­der­less print­ing is more than enough for the rapid pro­duc­tion of high-qual­i­ty doc­u­ments and pho­tos.

Advan­tages: the price-qual­i­ty is opti­mal, the cost of a print will please any miser.

Flaws: Con­nect with USB cable only, not includ­ed.

A great option for those who print a lot. One refill of ink bot­tles is enough for about 7,000 col­or pages!

Epson L312 — from 87$.

• with an excel­lent res­o­lu­tion of 5760 × 1440 dpi, the print­er out­puts 15 ppm in col­or over the USB inter­face. and 33 pages in black and white;
• print great pho­tos on brand­ed paper of any size. Togeth­er with this print­er, you can orga­nize an ama­teur pho­to stu­dio at home.

Advan­tages: high-qual­i­ty fast print­ing and large ink tanks of the CISS sys­tem — 70 ml.

Flaws: No wire­less con­nec­tion, 4‑color sys­tem.

EPSON, see­ing the inevitabil­i­ty of the trend, was the first to put its print­ers on sale with an already built-in CISS. Users greet­ed with a bang the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pour liters of ink in the RX and L mod­els — series. This mod­el, although not the cheap­est, is ready to give out up to 7500 col­or pages on one “charge”.

Epson L805 — from 180$

• the same 5760 × 1440 dpi, but already at 37/38 pages per minute, via WiFi, with sup­port for Mac OS;
• bor­der­less print­ing on labels, film, discs, and paper up to 300 g/m2.

Advan­tages: CISS, no ink codes required, wire­less.

Flaws: expen­sive “native” ink, print qual­i­ty is lame on plain paper in stan­dard set­tings. Fre­quent user com­plaints about dri­ver fail­ures.

It hard­ly makes sense to buy one if you print a cou­ple of sheets a week. But for an indi­vid­ual entre­pre­neur or a small pho­to stu­dio, this is just a god­send!

Laser printers

The use of these devices is jus­ti­fied only by the very low price of the print in the long term. Although the print­ers them­selves are not cheap.

Canon i‑SENSYS LBP611Cn — from 98$

• the res­o­lu­tion is min­i­mal, 600 × 600 dpi, but at such a price of the device this is not sur­pris­ing;
• weighs as much as 15.5 kg, takes up a lot of space too

Advan­tages: price, price and again price — for a laser print­er it’s very cheap.

Flaws: too big for the home, besides not suit­able for print­ing high-qual­i­ty pho­to­graph­ic mate­ri­als.

One of the con­tenders for the title of the best col­or print­er for the home is Canon’s i‑SENSYS laser print­er. You should not find fault with the speed and qual­i­ty of print­ing (the col­or gamut is small) — the device jus­ti­fies its price.

HP Color LaserJet Pro 254dw — from 140$.

• fast col­or A4 — 21 pages / min., the first page will “bake” in 11 sec­onds, a month­ly load of up to 40 thou­sand pages;
• sup­ports all oper­at­ing sys­tems, WiFi, USB and RJ45 com­mu­ni­ca­tion;
• Back­lit LCD menu dis­play and 256 MB mem­o­ry.

Advan­tages: Col­or car­tridge yield 1,400 pages

Flaws: rather bulky, col­or print res­o­lu­tion is low (600×600 dpi

Cre­at­ed for those who have a small office at home. Very fast, with a low cost per page.

LED printers

Xerox Phaser 6020 — from 120$.

• one of the most afford­able mod­els among LED;
• designed for high-vol­ume print­ing — up to 30,000 sheets per month

Advan­tages: does not make noise dur­ing oper­a­tion, has Wi-Fi and USB mod­ules “on board”, 1200 × 2400 dpi res­o­lu­tion is enough for most users.

Flaws: takes up a lot of space, weighs 11 kg — not for every apart­ment.

Until recent­ly, LED print­ers were expen­sive and used only in offices, but today you can find rel­a­tive­ly afford­able mod­els for the home.

Photo: Canon, pixabay.com

Oth­er use­ful print­er resources:

• Inkjet or laser print­er: which is bet­ter for home and office?
• How does a 3D print­er work? Just about com­plex

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